markk

Well, I've done just this. For three consecutive years recently I took one 2-week and two 3-week eating vacations in the Alsace region of France. (And I have no doubt whatsoever that the same could be done in virtually every region of the country; I did a culinary week in Burgundy some years ago, and the next region I'm researching and plotting to do weeks and weeks in is France's Southwest.) Here's a photographic web report on those trips from Alsace. These are some of the major restaurants we hit, and the multiple meals are from the fact that some we'd go to many times in the same year, and others we'd hit once each year. At the bottom of this page is a link called "Culinary Escapades" which just shows miscellaneous food finds and adventures. My Eating Trips to Alsace, France In the 70's I used to do this same kind of thing in Italy, and I've taken month-long culinary wanderings through Umbria, Tuscany, and Emilia-Romagna as well.

Coughy, don't look in any Chinese kitchens edit ...just don't look. (I know what you mean.) Another edit: If they continue to pass inspection, it's probably fine, and as long as I don't see rats having a party, it just doesn't bother me. ← Well, I've posted this story before, and I must tell it again... The bathroom at Sun Lok Kee (on Mott St. in New York's Chinatown, before it moved to Flushing) - surely one of the most beloved restaurants in New York - was probably the most disgusting restaurant bathroom on earth. Filthy, dirty, disgusting. I'm sure that the lady upthread [this was posted in a different thread originally] who made her family leave a Chinatown restaurant after seeing the bathroom would have found that one immculate compared to SLK's. Although that didn't keep me, or most people away, obviously. And I've run into Ed Koch eating there, for what it's worth, probably nothing. Yet strangely enough, their kitchens and back-of-the-house, which I got to see twice, were immaculately clean. After I had achieved "regular" status there, I commented on how strange it was for a place that specialized in such good seafood not to have tanks in the window as most places in Chinatown do. That prompted an invitation to come and see the tanks "downstairs" in what turned out to be a subterranean warren of rooms reached by a staircase at the back of the kitchen. And having seen their bathrooms, I was sure I didn't want to do this, truly afraid and anticipating just the worst sanitary nightmare imaginable. But the kitchen and downstairs storage and tank areas were spotlessly clean. There was just nothing scary about the cleanliness of the kitchen, and in particular the various basement rooms with the fish tanks were as clean as could be - and in the many tanks, the glass was sparkling, and the water crystal clear! There were tank after tank of the various fish being offered, and some really gigantic lobster tanks. All as clean as you could ever hope to see! It made us think that perhaps they kept the bathroom a pigsty for effect, honest. I got a repeat invitation at their new Flushing location to tour the new donwnstairs tanks after dinner one night and went through their entire kitchen, and it was as clean as I could have hoped for as well.

I had a dim-sum afternoon in Chinatown in July and forgot to post it, but I did write to a friend about it that evening, so I'll copy and paste it in here from when it was fresh in my mind: I've never had really good dim sum in New York, and this was no exception. Fresh in my mind was a wonderful place we found in Edison, NJ, (Wonder Seafood Restaurant) where everything was exquisite, delicate, and ethereal. Nothing in New York was any of those things. I started at Jin Fong, with a billion tables, very pretty, with a billion fresh pink tablecloths. Maybe a dozen tables were occupied, it being 2 pm on a Wednesday. I started with the Har Gao, Siu Mai, and the Cheung Fun, stuffed with shrimp. Everything was just okay, and nothing more exotic was offered that I wanted anyway. The NJ place (Wonder) had all kinds of things like Steamed Snow Pea Leaf with Shrimp dumplings, Steamed Watercress with Pork and Shrimp dumplings - they had nothing like this. Had Jin Fong been better I'd have ordered more and called it lunch, but I decided to cut my losses and move on. Next was Ping's Seafood, highly rated. I had the Har Gao and Siu Mai, and they tried to fool me and served me Shrimp Siu Mai instead of the Har Gao. I also had an order of the roast pork Cheung Fun. Everything was less good than Jin Fong, and I left a lot of it. Dull, thick, heavy, lackluster. Cut my losses and went for a stroll. Then, on to HSF. Had the Har Gao and Siu Mai. Both were strange, and totally not enjoyable. Paid and left. I was going to leave Chinatown at that point, but I remembered that we sort of liked Double 8 Palace when we went a year ago - didn't love it, but liked it, and I wanted to compare, so I walked over to E. Broadway. I had the Har Gao and Siu Mai. Involuntarily, I spit out the Siu Mai. It tasted very very strongly of stinking dried fish of some kind. I know that a microscopic amount of some kind of dried fish is used to flavor things like that, but this was putrid, and as I say, invoked an involuntary response from my mouth. The Har Gao were both cold, and lousy. They saw me spit out the one, and asked what was wrong, and I explained what it was, but of course the cart girls don't speak any English, and all they could say was “change? Change?” I tried to say “no, check please” but a woman came over and commanded me to “try pork with peanuts- very good” It was not. It could have been, but it was not, and was a lousy taste to end the day on, but what could you do. Then the owner, having lunch at the next table, came over to ask “Everything okay?” I was nice (I mean, even I don't get upset over a $2.80 dish of dumplings, although I would have loved to end on a nice taste), and I told him the Har Gao were cold and bad. He went rummaging through the cart and dug me out another one from the bottom against my protests, and as he watched, I tasted it and it was cold and lousy. He took another one from the cart and put it on his table, then took my check and adjusted it to $4.25 (don't know why - I couldn't really eat anything, nor did I care) and as he watched me leave money, I added several dollars for the girls and he beamed with pride and thanked me.

I grew up in NYC in the 1950's, and the only lettuce known to us was iceberg. My mother (not a great cook) would cut it into wedges and make her "special" dressing whereby she blended mayonnaise and ketchup. I think that was all that there was to the salad, and for as many years as I ever ate at home, ending in about 1972 when I stopped coming home from college, that's as advanced as salad ever got in my house. In 1969 I went to California on my own, and the discovery of other lettuces was a mind-boggling experience to me. I have tried to eat them as much as I could ever since, and these days I'm sort of addicted to watercress and arugula and the like. But growing up, I don't think we ever got as adventurous at home as Romaine, even.

Although I haven't been in about two years, I have had many many truly wonderful meals at Tournesol in Long Island City. The food was always superb, and the people warm and wonderful.

Well, that's not the photo I wanted to post. It's the one linked right below, which I was unable to grab by itself. And I meant to say in response to Jason's comment "Unfortunately, I'm not easily disguisable" that if Rachel were willing to go in on it with you, I think with a little black shoepolish for your hair you could fool them easily. Jason and Rachel in Disguise? And I wasn't really proposing cloak and dagger tactics, I just meant that, very unfortunately, there's been a lot of talk upthread about standards slipping here, which Jason contributed to as well, and then said that he wanted to go again and check it out for dinner, and after that admitted "it would be virtually impossible for me or Steven to have a bad meal at C46." I do think it would be a very interesting test of a lot of theories if Jason were to go back for a dinner. If he said that dinner was as good as ever and that his friends (who fell out of love with the place) were wrong, I for one would absolutely believe him. And if he said that the food was not as good as it used to be, it would certainly prove that there really is nothing a restaurant can do at the last minute - and I would think that in the case of a place like this that's usually not crowded, there would be quite a bit they could do.

Okay, I'll admit that's true. Well, there are famous people you could be disguised as, and as long as you hummed a little "O Sole Mio" I think you'd probably pull it off, too, but for the sake of this discussion, let's assume you are correct on that point. The more important point, however, is Well, you never know, do you? This would certainly test out a lot of the theories and arguments raging over in the Fat Guy Lays it On the Table thread. I think that you should go back. Of course, you can't be anonymous, but you could show up announced, and I hope that you do, because I know that you'll be honest about it. Of course, if the food has indeed slipped badly and they pull it together when they see you come in and serve you a great meal, that'll be that. But if it has slipped and they can't, that would make for some very interesting reporting and discussion.

I once made the mistake of speaking to an American gent in a restaurant in Rome. He knew that we were Americans from eavesdropping on our conversation, and commented to me how utterly astounding it was that I had spoken Italian to the waiter. The foolish part was that we actually conversed with him for a minute, and at one point asked "Did you have the prosciutto and melon?" and he answered, "no, haven't had that and we've been here a week. Ham and melon - I just can't see that combination." Well, based on the numbers that people are quoting, and on all the various experiences like ours, do you think it's more likely that there will be a burst of Gastro-Tourism in numbers sufficient to keep foods from homogenizing, or do you think that in order to keep tourism alive, restaurants in tourist desinations will start to accommodate the McDonalds and Burger King Lovers even more?

Unfortunaly, it will cause homogenization and it already has, so it will just cause more. Let me try to explain... I live in NYC, so I have access to lots of great Chinese restaurants, which I love. But only on the nights when I crave Chinese food. On the nights I want French food, I want French food, and sometimes when I crave it too much for too long, I take a trip to France. Well, on my last trip to France, it seemed that all the chefs there had just taken trips to China to feed their fascination with Chinese food. And they were all cooking with heavy Chinese influences. So I left behind Chinese bbq duck, steamed fish with ginger and scallions, and spicy oriental noodles only to find that the various restaurants in France that I went to were featuring "Canard a la mode Chinoise", steamed fish with ginger and scallions, and spicy oriental noodles - and no, the chef's had not turned their restaurants into Chinese restaurants, but rather had done this in the sense of "fusion". But if I go to China next and find that the chefs have returned from trips to France and are featuring cold terrine of foie gras, and all the things they ate in France, well I'm going to be pretty upset. But I'll be most upset of all if all the great cuisines of the world 'fuse' into one, so that you can't tell one from another. I like it the way it is now, Chinese food one night, French food another, and Italian food another. But when cheaper and faster air travel makes it feasible and affordable for a chef from anywhere in the nether regions of rural France or Italy to travel to any other country for even as little as a week, and when that same cheap, fast transportation means that every foodstuff, every delicacy from every corner of the world is now available for sale the next day in every other, I think we have a problem. I do think that it's great when peoples "fuse", in that it eradicates a lot of hatreds and wars and makes the world a more peaceful and tolerant place to live. And whether or not 'fused' couples choose to hand down their cultural traditions and keep them strong and alive, they'll always be part of them, and they'll always be part of who their children are. But if the cuisines of the world fuse as well, what we have to eat on Monday will offer no variety of seasoning, or spice, or taste, from what he have on Tuesday or Wednesday, and so on.

As my grandmother would say, "Az di bubbe volt gehat beytsim volt zi geven mayn zeyde!" - nothing worthwile in life is ever easy. I'm sure that in the interest of research, there would be many Gulletteers, some of whom may even be in the Theater Arts, who'd be willing to get together with you a-la Ruth Reichl and plan, and get you into a disguise that even Rachel wouldn't recognize you in. Let's see what kind of volunteers we get!

I think that several issues need to be considered here, especially in light of those raised over in "Fat Guy Lays it on the Table", namely that it is certain that the owners of C46 and their staff memebers read these forums, and that Jason is known to them, and notwithstanding, perhaps, how little can be done in a high-end French restaurant to alter the food at service-time once a known critic is sighted, there's every reason to believe that upon seeing Jason, the C46 kitchen will make a massive effort to serve him food that is not greasy, and addresses all of the complaints in this thread. Therefore, in the interest of a fair review from the restaurant's original and most ardent supporter, I think it's necessary, and in fact essential, that Jason dine there in disguise, at this point, and that he of course not post the date of his visit in advance.

You guys (and gals) have warmed my cardiovascular circulation module with your acceptance of my attempt at earthly humor. I thank you all for the very kind comments you took the time to post! I'm off on a trip back to my home planet, where my maternal unit has made her autumnal batch of life-sustaining nutrient concentracte (she has three times won the Titanium Ribbon for her recipe!) for me to bring back to tide me through the earth winter. And the warm glow of your many kind comments will sustain me through the trip, so I thank you again. My paternal unit there is hard at work on a soporific agent which is lipid-independent in Earth's atmosphere and hopes to be able to introduce it here sometime soon. ~Markk

I'd like to add my two-cents to the steak cooking ideas, although they offer only very subtle variations on what's been said above - still, this is the steak for me... A bone-in rib steak, indeed. And a very very thick one, for sure a minimum of two inches, at that. I also ask the butcher for some extra of the nice, firm, white suet that they usually trim off of it. I take one skillet per steak (I don't have cast iron, as I have an electric, albeit Kitchen-Aid stovetop, and I use Cuisinarts pans) and I get them close to screeching, and I render a lot of the fat in them. At the same time, I take cake-cooling racks and heat them up to 350 in my oven, but the racks have to be small enough to fit inside the skillets (or you need large skillets). When the fat's melted and blistering, I put the steaks in, one per pan. There's really not a lot of point to seasoning the meat before this, as anything will burn. I let the steak go quite a long time, until I get a nice crust - and then some - it's not to "sear" the steak, but because I like the taste of the crust, and with the fat itself, it's not going to burn, just char tastily. When it's good and charred, I flip the steak with tongs, allowing the rendered fat to settle first for a minute and heat up, and usually I tilt the pan and sear all the edges of the steak for a minute as well. Then I set the other side down and char the heck out of it. Doing this for many years, I've learned how to 'feel' when the meat is extrememly rare (and both sides have a great crust) and indeed I do tilt the pan and spoon the blistering fat over the top side while the bottom side is cooking. Then, I turn off the heat. Using the tongs, I take the hot cake-cooling racks out of the oven, lift the steaks, pour out the fat, and place the racks in so that they'll lift the steaks a little bit above the hot pan, and I put the steaks back down for a good fifteen, twenty minutes or so. The initial residual heat finishes cooking them, and then they go through their rest. Before I serve them, I heat plates and lace them with French butter, which I also place on top of the steak, with salt and a little pepper. And sometimes I beat black truffle oil into the butter early on and chill it, and put that on top of the warm steak.

The exact dish you're describing is a frequent daily special at Lupa, usually with some kind of a slow-simmered pork and red wine ragu, and being all about the pasta, is always sublime. I had just this not too long ago when four of us went and had a pasta festival (many half orders served in a row) and the papardelle with the pork were so outrageously good that they stole the show (it was a very close call.) How this helps you, I can't say for sure, but you could always call to explain your craving and see what they tell you and take it from there.

Ah, I know the frustrations of the French keyboard well! I thought I post a picutre of one for anybody that's not familiar with it - just place your hands over it and try to type a normal sentence and see how far you get before you hit a disaster...

This is very true. For a number of reasons, I spend a lot of time in Alsace, as I've mentioned, and I love to go up into the Vosges mountains, not all that far even that it's out of the question for dinner, and there I know some people that still live a good part of their lives, because they can and because they want to, the "old" way; in particular the people who own the hotel/restaurant that I'm always posting about, who have become great friends over the years, although I'm very hesitant to post these same pictures at the risk of boring everybody to death with them. But of course I learned that the trout come from a stream on the property where they catch them as you order them. And when I asked about the wild duck that they had one night, where he got them, Thierry the chef said that he and his dad shot them themselves. And another night when I was asking for frog legs, he told me that he'd have them two days later. I asked "where do you get them?" and he said "a friend of ours owns the best frog 'farm', (or whatever he called it) in The Vosges. Well not surprisingly his dad, the founder and original chef of the place was telling me one year about the trip they had taken to "America" eariler that year. When I asked where they went, he told me that they had gone to Alaska for some wild salmon fishing. Why was I not surprised. Yes for sure France is changing. I consider myself very lucky when I get a glimpse back in time.

Does anybody know of any good Alsace Pinot Blancs? As a rule, I found that the 2003's were pretty terrible, and they're not moving off the shelves in the stores apparently for that reason. Has anybody found or tried any good 2004's?

Thank you, John. I was writing this apparently as you were posting. Here's the thing... Of course that is the historical stereotype I was playing on when I made my "joke" - and if all the people who PM'd me that they thought it was indeed funny were to post that, I'd fare a lot better in the thread. But I meant nothing but fun, and one more time didn't mean to offend the cuisine of a country I love, and to say it one more time, I don't go on vacation to diet. Now here's a quote from the related, split thread... Speaking for myself, I travel to France as often as I can for two reasons - one is the fabulous food, and the other is the incredible warmth and hospitality of the effervescent people. I've had hundreds of experiences over the years where, for example, I've asked for directions and a French person said "it's complicated so if you have a second and a pen I'll draw you a map", or where French people, realizing that French is not my native tongue when I ask for something, reply "Oh, would it be better for you if I answered in English" [i mean, when foreign tourists come up to Americans here for help or directions, how many offer to help them in their native tongue, or can. So if anybody made a crack or a joke about the French people, I would be up in arms. But I made a joke about the food, you know. I mean no offense. Sometimes it's a good thing not to take too many things in life too seriously. A lot of the population of the world, and the US as well, can barely afford the food that’s necessary to achieve the basic nutrition that sustains life. So for those people who can afford that, and more, and for whom dining is an affordable extravagance, a luxury, an excess, a ‘game’, it is offensive (in my mind anyway) to treat it so incredibly seriously as not to realize a joke. As I say, it's okay to make fun of the historical/stereotypical idea of a particular cuisine, though very much not okay to do the same with a 'people'. Also, I happen to know quite a number of French people who dine regularly in the 2 and 3 star restaurants in France, and if the can afford to, why not? Those restaurants are rife with tourists (who undoubtedly know as little about cusine as they do about architecture when they stare at churches) for sure, but as I say, I know lots of French people (not millionaires by any means) who frequent them. And why shouldn't they? Don't Americans who live in New York flock to the great restaurants here? Sure, they find the greatest ethnic holes-in-the-wall as well, and when I'm in France and manage to strike up a conversation with French people dining near me who clearly are into their food, I always ask for recommendations of all types of restaurants as well. Often they'll give a very insightful discussion of which of the starred restaurants are great and which are overrated, and then when I ask for lesser suggestions, I get them as well. And one of the greatest meals I ever had in France was in the town of Dahlenheim, about a 30 minute drive outside of Strasbourg on dirt roads. There, in a simple restaurant that served "Tarte Flambee" (the ultra-thin bread dough spread out like a pizza, topped with creme fraiche and fromage frais, and topped with chunks of raw bacon and slivers of onion, put in a ferociously hot wood burning oven to crisp until the edges start to char in under a minute), we started with that, then had the most fantastic meal of a grilled rib steak served with the best green salad and pommes frites I ever had. If there was any way that we could have seen each other across the table through the heaviest clouds of smoke that I've ever been in (I guess the locals are smokers) I'd have returned there a million times, but alas, the next time we tried to go, the cloud of smoke that greeted us when we opened the door sent us driving right back to Strasbourg. We did ask if there was a separate room we could eat in, and they said "no, sorry, but that table in the back corner, that's the no smoking table if you want it."

Well, if people say that about the French people, they're dead wrong. And way more often than not, people say that the French people are great. Your story typifies how warm and wonderful the French people really are to visitors in their country. I've had billions of experiences like that over the years, and in fact, after the great food, the warmth and helpfulness of the people is the number 2 reason I choose France for my travels.

Oh, for crying out loud (he says with a big grin on his face) - thank you Chefzadi and others... Of course sauerkraut's a vegetable. What I meant was, I spend a lot of time in Alsace, eating in a lot of stupendous places, where I am now quite good friends with a lot of chefs, and I offer below links to the meals they have served me. But except for an occasional pea on the plate for decoration, these meals do not have a lot of green vegetables, which for me is a shame, since for health reasons I try to eat tons of dark leafy greens on a daily basis. I'm not saying anything bad about these places, because Lord knows I love them more than words can express, but I think it's clear from the photos that green vegetables are not a visible part of the meals... Spectacularly good, but green-vegetable-less meals in Alsace

No - I meant it entirely in a joking manner, and in a spirit of fun. I'm Jewish, and grew up with that cuisine - and loving it!... But the standard jokes are about how 'heavy' and 'indigestible' that cuisine is, and I agree, and laugh all the way to the kitchen until I give myself indigestion. I know that you're French, Chef Zadi, and I promise you that I travel frequently to France for the sole pleaure and privilege of eating French food for a few weeks at a time. Sure, I don't have to order foie gras every night, but I do, because I primarily can't get it as good, or as deliciously prepared here as I can in France. And I order lots of rich, fatty foods in restaurants because I specifically don't go on vacation tø diet! I also dont' actually go on vacation to visit museums, or see sights, as many people do. I go on vacation to eat, and France is my destination of choice. While many people plan their trips using guidebooks that tell them every museum and 'sight' to see, I research my trips based on restaurants - those which will have 'local' cuisine, those which will have 'haute' cuisine, those whose descriptions interest me. And I spend my days in France wandering whatever city or town I'm in, visiting food stores, cheese stores, wine stores, supermarkets and hypermarkets, and when I see intersting sights along the way, I do stop and enjoy them. So when I talked about the tradition of French food being fatty, I meant no disrespect whatsoever, only love and admiration. Well, I can't explain it better than that. I hope that rings true to you, because indeed it was meant that way. And yes, of course you should post your humorous stories. I could tell you a lot of funny stories in return, and in fact, if you post yours, I'll post mine.

Another thing you can do if you're in a big city is venture out into the suburbs, where tourists never have any reason to go, and just pop into a restaurant where the locals go for dinner after a day at work. Will you find simple versions of what the fancy restaurants in the heart of the city are serving (I'm deathly afraid to call it "French food"), or will you find chain restaurants with baby-back ribs, or Texas-style steakhouses with peanut shells on the floor? You'd be surprised.

Absolutely, positively you should, most definitely. And I'm sure it'll have me rolling in the aisles as well. What fun's life if we can't poke fun at ourselves and the things we love, especially such obsessions as food and gluttony!

Oh My Lord, who would eat a meal as unhealthy as that ?!?!?! At least we know from Serge Renaud's 1991 study, "The French Paradox" that the duck fat contained in the foie gras and duck are heart-healthy (and the New York Times's front-page article that week "Foie Gras Goes to the Heart of Health") and that the meal I showed is good for you. The one you're describing is a heart attack on a plate! Who would eat that? I think that you make a good point, though. My point was intended to be a humorous one, the association of "richness" with French food, and I kind of stand by it for the humor that I think it has. I'd be curious to know, does anybody reading this thread from the top think that my first post was humorous? But you raise a teriffic point of course, that the amount of saturated fat, trans fats, and cholesterol hidden in American fast foods, and processed foods, are genuinely deadly. I for one don't eat them - fast food, or processed food, of any kind, that is. In France, although this is changing of course, there's still a lot of natural food to be found, and a diet of such food, lots of bread, and fish, and of course, even a lot of duck and foie gras, is still healthier than what people eat in America. (Strangely, I don't think I've ever been served a green vegetable in Alsace - oh, maybe a pea or an asparagus spear to decorate the plate, but in all the meals I eat as witnessed by the photos in the link in my sig, there could be more green vegetables, but that is probably a regional oddity.) But I thought the initial post was humorous, and I'm hoping there will be at least one or two gulleteers who agree?

What great photos, everyone. Here are a few more fish from my travels. The beginning of a delicious 'zuppa di pesce' on Capri... and some gamberoni from Capri, though I don't know that they're actually local... And a restaurant in the Vosges mountains (Alsace, France) where they walk you down to the stream at the moment you order either the Truitelles (baby trout) or adult Trout, catch it, and cook it up within moments... And lest it be accused that I've never caught anything, a Turbot that I wrestled away from the supermarket in Colmar... And that same turbot cooked and plated (no, I didn't really catch it)